Former ACORN organizer worries about its future

Matthew Hinton / The Times-PicayuneMembers of the New Orleans chapter of ACORN, pictured here in Nov., 2008. Former Chief organizer Wade Rathke said despite the current controversy, he thinks large chapters like the one in the city will survive.

Wade Rathke, the former chief organizer of ACORN, acknowledged that the organization he founded in 1970 is caught in a public storm that threatens its existence.

But Rathke, who lives in New Orleans where the national organization has had its headquarters -- it is relocating to Washington -- said he expects large and well-rooted chapters, such as the one in New Orleans, to survive.

"We've been in Louisiana a long time, since 1976, and they haven't built a stick big enough to chase us out of Louisiana, and it isn't because they haven't thought about it," Rathke said.

Rathke was in Washington to talk about his new book, "Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families," at Busboys and Poets, a bookstore, restaurant and café with a decidedly left-wing bent and clientele. But the small crowd for Rathke's book talk included correspondents for the conservative magazine National Review, and the ironically titled Web site biggovernment.com, whose viral videotapes have brought ACORN to the edge of ruin.

The videotapes, made with a hidden camera by a young man posing as a pimp and a young woman playing the part of a prostitute, showed ACORN workers in several cities offering helpful advice on how to set up an illegal business.

John McCusker / The Times-Picayune

ACORN has long been the bete noire of many Republicans and conservatives generally, who have characterized it as a corrupt and criminal enterprise, and one whose organizing on behalf of the poor is mostly designed to help Democratic campaigns.

The videotapes stuck like lightning and electrified Republican efforts to do in ACORN at a moment of weakness. Many Democrats either jumped on board or stood aside as Congress has voted to keep ACORN from receiving any federal money, though the Congressional Research Service has advised that those efforts may be unconstitutional because they single out ACORN.

Rathke noted that on the state level, governors, including Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, have got into a "dogpile about not funding ACORN and then they had to sort of embarrassingly say, oh, we don't fund it anyway."

He said Louisiana found that ACORN was part of a coalition that was to have received one small grant. Canceling it means "some poor people aren't going to get free tax help -- well I guess that's the smartest thing I ever heard."

"We're in a period of neo-McCarthyism, " Rathke said. "Everybody is running for cover, it's everyman for himself and somebody turn out the light."

"How you can go from the Obama moment less than a year ago to a period now where a hardscrabble Taliban-in-the-cave, right-wing Republican movement is able to intimidate people to cut and run is beyond me, " he said.

The latest turn has been efforts by some on the right to tie President Obama and people in his administration directly to ACORN, and Rathke said his new tack is to advise friends to keep their distance, lest they be found guilty by association.

"I have no friends, until this McCarthyist moment dies down. If you're walking down the street and see me, cross the street and keep walking. I understand, " he said.

Rathke said that when he left ACORN, it had 102 offices and nearly a half-million dues-paying members. He said it will almost certainly emerge from the current controversy diminished.

"I know it's going to have a smaller footprint, " he said "It's going to be involved in a long rebuilding process, and frankly I hope they have the courage to do that, " Rathke said. "It's very difficult to fall from the mountain and have to climb back up again, and I hope they are able to do that."